With over 60% smartphone penetration for newly shipped devices, there will be over 5 billion smartphones by 2020 produced by thousands of Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). With over 1,500 Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) and Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) globally, the telecommunications industry is a $1.4+ trillion industry with voice accounting for over $664 billion. Additionally, there are over 6.7 billion mobile subscriptions around the world today with an average of 2+ SIM cards per wireless subscriber in various geographic markets.
Indeed, many wireless subscribers around the world need to carry multiple SIM cards for various personal and professional reasons. This has led to the recent growth in demand for dual-SIM card phones or even triple-SIM card phones in some parts of the world. However, as more MNOs and MVNOs are established in various geographic markets (e.g., 4 or more mobile operators per country), it becomes more and more inconvenient for consumers to access the various proprietary networks.
In other words, there is a clear friction in accessing local cellular networks faced by consumers either as travelers in international roaming situations or residents in geographic areas with multiple MNOs and MVNOs.
SIM cards have evolved other the past few years and their form factors will ineluctably change further in the future. From the standard 2FF card (mini-SIM) to the 4FF card (nano-SIM), it has now evolved to the MFF2 form factor, which is mainly used in machine-to-machine (M2M) applications. Introduced into consumer devices, the MFF2 form factor and its subsequent iterations could radically change the manufacturing, distribution and usage of mobile phones and SIM cards, potentially enabling a new telecommunications ecosystem.
In December of 2013, the GSM Association (GSMA), which is the largest association of mobile operators and related companies, essentially standardized reprogrammable SIM cards. As a result of the standardization efforts, many new use cases will be soon possible in an interoperable manner. These use cases include the ability to seamlessly select and switch cellular networks without physically changing SIM cards.
Although the GSMA's specifications were developed primarily for M2M devices, nothing prevents those skilled in the art from using them for consumer devices. Doing so would therefore remove the current friction of switching networks faced by consumers in international roaming situations or in local geographic areas with multiple cellular carriers. This empowers consumers with the ability to dynamically change cellular networks to extract the best value for mobile communication needs, based on their personal priorities for price, data speed, network quality, etc. It also eliminates the need for carrying multiple separate devices and may prevent device-theft if SIM cards were to be fully virtualized (i.e., virtual SIM card technology) and tightly integrated with the mobile equipment.
For local telecom regulators, virtual SIM card technology lowers the barriers to switching for consumers and thereby fosters a healthy and competitive telecommunications landscape in which MNOs and MVNOs compete on price, service quality and innovation.
For OEMs, virtual SIM card technology provides more space in the printed circuit board assembly (PCBA) design, allowing the incorporation of additional sensors or other chip components. It also removes the complexity of dealing with various SIM card vendors approved by MNOs in a kitting environment for subsidized phones. Furthermore, it could be a key differentiator for early adopters in the highly competitive mobile phone market.
MNOs stand to immensely benefit from virtual SIM card technology as well. The technology may facilitate enhanced distribution because consumers would no longer need to travel to a store to purchase a SIM card and sign up for service. MNO service discovery, selection and provisioning could all take place on the device itself, through an easy to use mobile application. Such a mobile application could then help effectively streamline the redundant Know Your Customer (KYC) procedures currently in effect in many countries. Moreover, for all MNOs, regardless of market position, this technology can eliminate the costs of procuring, testing, certifying and distributing physical SIM cards by removing the inherent logistical complexities associated with managing physical SIM cards. This will enable MNOs to better focus capital spend and management attention on network capacity, coverage and other differentiated services. Ultimately, this technology may reduce the current cost of acquiring and retaining subscribers, potentially improving thus the bottom line for MNOs.
Finally, virtual SIM card technology may provide important environmental benefits by lowering the overall volume of manufactured SIM cards globally. It remains unclear if most of the billions of SIM cards produced each year are still not halogen-free as halogen is toxically corrosive, which therefore has the potential to damage people's health and their environment.
There have been various disclosures relating to virtual SIM card technology. However, none of these disclosures have presented a unified end-to-end system and associated methods to create, distribute and manage virtual SIM cards in conjunction with specific software and hardware configurations for a mobile station operating in multi-SIM, multi-active mode with Voice over IP (VoIP) capability. In fact, there are no mobile phones available in the market that are claimed to utilize an embedded Universal Integrated Circuit Card (eUICC) or a plurality of concurrent eUICCs (e.g., using virtual SIM card technology) while featuring a multi-SIM, multi-active mode of operation. Such an apparatus would naturally require developing the corresponding server infrastructure, thus creating a specific system and implementing various non-trivial procedures.